Also, I'm not sure if you are demoing an existing structure, if the structure is freestanding, etc, but this will obviously greatly affect your overall budget.For our project, most of the material prices are in line with expectations, but where we've been shocked with recent increases is the soft cost. 

Personally updated and furnished all units, increasing the income on the property.What was the outcome?

My current company is AllState, and they increased their rates by 100%, so I'm looking elsewhere.

If you won’t hire a PM I’d send something like: You’ve been a great tenant but because of market conditions the rent will be increasing to $x at the end of your current lease.

Then don't rehab for zero COC return.But if you can spend $3000 on the lite rehab and increase rent from $1000 to $1050 then you'd gain $50 per month.50 x 12 = $600 more annually because you rehabbed.600 / 3000 = .2 or a 20% cash on cash return! 

Leveraging equity to purchase a short-term rental (STR) in Tampa Bay can diversify your portfolio and potentially generate strong cash flow, but it also increases your financial risk.

The instructor gave a case study where we needed to team up as groups of fours and figure out a way to buy an REO property with no money of our own and increase the equity by 30K.

There is increasing supply as a result of increasing demand but the real question you're asking is whether it's going to lead to oversupply and lower rents or not.

I am an investor and realtor as well but I focus mostly on fixing up distressed properties to increase value and grow the equity and that usually allows better cashflow also. 

You haven't seen it, but you know automatically that that you can increase the rent by $25K a year?